Blocking Starter Tool Kit

You save: $10.46 (21%)

$39.99

Whether you're finishing a cozy sweater or a lovely lace shawl, blocking is the vital finishing step to creating polished handcrafted creations. This kit includes all of the essentials you need to finish your project with a professional polish. Plus, a few fancy extras round out the set - care labels to sew onto your garments and a lint shaver to keep your knits looking as good as the day you cast off the last stitch.

Lana - Blocking is often done with just steaming to dampen the knit fabric or towels under or over to absorb excessive moisture. If you have a more experienced friend who gets results that you admire, you might want him or her to show you what she uses to get her results. Otherwise I would recommend a class in blocking. Some good ones are available online. I agree with you that a very wet garment sitting on typical blocking material will take forever to dry. Fortunately that is not the technique I have been taught - some people actually block on the mattress on their bed in the morning and have it dry enough to sleep on that night, which also would not happen if you blocked a soaking wet sweater, since in that case the mattress would absorb the excess moisture. (Do not use your mattress if you sleep on a water bed or an air mattress, however!)
Good luck with future experiments with blocking. It is well worth the extra time to make stuff you have worked hard on look at its best. You might try a plant mister (a spray bottle for spraying a fine mist on plants that like to have their leaves wet, like some African violets) or any other spray bottle that will make your garment damp, not soaked. Or if you want to wash the item thoroughly before blocking, wait until the item is only damp before blocking it. Some yarns will stretch way out of proportion if you soak them, which is yet another reason for not doing your blocking with excessively wet items - these yarns may be labelled "spot clean only" or may only say "dry flat". All this and more are reasons for blocking a gauge swatch before you knit the main project.
Oh, and you can use a fan to help your blocked items dry faster if they were a little wetter than you intended, or if you have blocked the item and then realized that the item is way too wet, you can blot up moisture with clean paper towels or clean dry towels until you cannot blot any more moisture, and then use the fan to finish drying the blocked item.
Thank you for writing your review. I bet dozens of knitters have run into the same dilemma with no knitters around to ask.

1 out of 5 stars

Lana01-14-2016 12:48pm

I bought just the nine piece blocking mats (pins separately) but I think this is made of the same material. The blocked item takes days to dry, even when turning them over probably because there is no ventilation and the wet item just sits on the hard plastic block. Nice idea but terrible material.